When performing a blood test on a patient in a hospital or the like, a plurality of sample containers containing blood are collected in a sample rack after collecting blood in a blood collecting room. Thereafter, the sample containers are brought to an analysis room and various analyses are performed in the analysis room. In this case, in order to link the patient from which the blood is sampled and the sample, a barcode is attached to the sample container. When moving the sample rack between rooms, the samples are checked by reading the barcodes and measures to prevent loss are taken.
In recent years, instead of the barcode, a method of attaching a wireless tag such as an RFID tag to the sample container and managing the sample container using a wireless tag reader has been adopted. According to the method using the wireless tag, it is possible to wirelessly and collectively read the wireless tags attached to several to several tens of sample containers. Therefore, it is possible to check the sample containers in a short period time. However, there are cases in which the wireless tag is actually overlooked, and in that case, it is necessary to read again the wireless tags attached to each sample container one by one.
Such a problem can be solved if it is possible to acquire a position of the wireless tag that cannot be read in the sample rack by some method. That is, even if the wireless tag is overlooked, it can be settled by re-reading only the wireless tag attached to the sample container at a particular position, so that the operation can be simplified. Therefore, there is a demand for a sample rack device capable of acquiring the reading status of the wireless tag and the position of the sample container by linking therebetween. In the device, a wireless tag reader is provided in each of portions of the sample rack, which contain the sample containers, and information read from the wireless tag by the wireless tag reader is linked with position information of the wireless tag reader which read the wireless tag so as to acquire the position information of the sample container. With such a device, even if the wireless tag reader cannot read the information from any of the wireless tags due to some cause despite the presence of the sample container, only the wireless tag reader needs to perform a reading operation again, and it is possible to greatly simplify the operation.
However, the sample rack device which is described above requires the same number of wireless tag readers as the number of samples to be loaded, the device becomes expensive, and the weight thereof increases. Therefore, it is not appropriate for use as a sample rack for transportation. Also, in order to reduce the weight, it is conceivable to make the sample rack for reading different from the sample rack for transportation, but in such a case, an operation of transferring the sample containers between the sample rack for reading and the sample rack for transportation occurs before and after reading, thereby increasing an operator's burden.
For this reason, there is a demand for a device which is inexpensive, can identify the sample container and the position of the sample container while using a common sample rack.